Understanding media

Yesterday I read the first chapter Medium is the Message and selected some things I found interesting.
Understanding Media

The "medium is the message" because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.

The "content" of any medium blinds us to the charachter of the medium.
Electrical light is a medium without "content". p9 UM The extensions of man, McLuhan

Cubism announced that the medium is the message. p13

Oral and intuitive oriental culture <-> Rational (uniform, continuous, segmential), visual European patterns of experience. p16

As we become more aware of the effects of technology on psychic formation and manifestation, we are losing all confidence in our right to assign guilt. p17

Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. The "content" of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. ... The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception. p19

We become what we behold. p20

Cotton and oil, like radio and tv, become "fixed charges" on the entire psychic life of the community. p22

"No one can shield himself from such an influence". CG Jung on Romans and slaves. Contributions to analytical psychology, London, 1928

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The term media event is an indication that in a postmodern world we can no longer rely on a stable relationship or clear distinction between a "real" event and its mediated representation. John Fiske, Media Matters